I buy The Times 6 days a week in the old fashioned paper version & I cannot see that I shall want to stop doing this any time soon. It has that unique go anywhere quality, the content is more easily assimilable in a package which comes in a familiar shape, I even have uses for old newspaper, once I have done the crossword & sudoku, other than just putting it all into the recycling bin. This costs me about £28 pcm.
The option of taking out a subscription does not really appeal; the discount offered is based on the assumption that the package also includes the Sunday Times & is fiddly to administer - it means remembering to make sure you are carrying the tokens with you, especially if you do not always buy the copy at the same shop.
I have started however to access the online version almost every day, since this became easy to do via Google – The Times own search facility often failed to locate the article I was seeking, even though I had the name of the writer & keywords (the online headline is often not the same as the paper version). I use it for fact checking or for copying & pasting quotes that I have already identified for my commonplace book. I also have a couple of Times blogs on my Google reader & I put links to The Times from my own blog – something which I like to think helps repay The Times from a (very) modest amount of extra traffic to their site. Connectivity is after all the point of the Web.
It is not just the journalism, in the sense of the written material, which has value. The editorial function is what makes a newspaper worth it - by its choice of good writers & in its selection of information about current concerns and in its long history; in short, the brand. It would be impossible to keep so well informed if I had to seek out all the individual pieces myself from among all the other content on the web - something which is often forgotten when ‘unlimited choice’ is being trumpeted.
£2 a week or £1 a day does not sound all that much for access to the online version, but if all the other newspapers & journals which I might also visit online follow suit, the cost will be simply prohibitive.
It seems to me that what we need is some form of internet cash, small change which will enable us to pay just for what we want – I do not have much interest in breaking news for example – & I do not see the point of my putting links to The Times if the follower is going to be greeted by a demand for £1.
I am thinking of some way of paying pennies to see a specific article, rather than unlimited access to the site. Some kind of central clearing house serving a range of publishers, so I am not saddled with learning & trying to remember umpty-nump new passwords & access codes.
Pay As You Go helped to transform the market for mobile phones. Who knows, this pile ‘em high & sell ‘em cheap approach might mean that I won’t even notice that more than a £’s worth of pennies has left my virtual purse today.
Until then, I shall go back to my old tried & tested method of clipping cuttings & retyping any bits of the paper which I wish to preserve in my own records.
